Just north of children playing in Little League games and diners at the popular Boat Basin Cafe, a body washed up near the north dock of the boat basin at West 79th Street around 1 p.m. The police blocked off the path by the Hudson River, creating a logjam of bicyclists, joggers, and walkers. Some commented that there seemed to be a lot of jumpers, lately, referring to the two George Washington Bridge suicides—NJ chef/reality show participant Joseph Cerniglia and Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi.
The police tell us the body was a white male, age 56. One man, a sailboat owner who wasn't allowed onto the pier due to the investigation, told us that he was concerned the body could be someone from the marina community.
Dead bodies that rise to the surface in water—referred to as "floaters"—apparently tend to appear more in springtime, "In the winter... the cold water temperature slows the decomposition of a body. As the temperature rises in the spring, decomposition speeds up, producing gases that make the body buoyant and bring it to the surface."
